UK home secretary puzzled by exclusion from Trump banquet

LONDON – Britain’s interior minister says he hasn’t been told why he wasn’t invited to last week’s state banquet for President Donald Trump at Buckingham Palace.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid was the only senior Cabinet minister not invited.

Javid told the BBC on Thursday that he had asked the prime minister’s office why, but had not received a satisfactory answer. He said: “I don’t like it. It is odd.”

In 2017, after Trump retweeted a British far-right group, Javid tweeted: “So POTUS has endorsed the views of a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me. He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.”

Javid, whose parents came from Pakistan, is one of several Conservative lawmakers running to replace Prime Minister Theresa May.